A frontier’s insight on Oslo Blockchain Day 2019
Conferences represent probably the best means (in the physical world) for people to showcase their work in front of a wider audience that they usually get access to. As a result, like-minded people have the opportunity to establish partnerships and help each other take an extra step further in the digital innovation process.
Unless you’ve lived under a rock, you probably heard about Blockchain and the degree of its impact on society. There is no secret that the 21st-century society suffers from a centralisation crisis. We almost take it for granted that 3rd party organisations should be in charge of mediating the vast majority of transactions that are established on a day to day basis among people and organisations.
Blockchain challenges this concept and proposes a completely new design in terms of transparency and trust among entities inside a network.
Throughout conversations that I’ve carried with others, it comes easy to ‘spot’ a pattern in terms of their understanding (or misunderstanding) of Blockchain. Since it is a relatively new player in the innovation game (as opposed to Artificial Intelligence), it can be somehow challenging to know how and why do we even bother familiarising ourselves with this technology.
This is why I propose the reader to bear with me and explore Oslo’s ‘Blockchain Day’ conference together. Hopefully, you’ll get inspired and gain extra motivation in order to challenge the idea that peer-to-peer connections should necessarily be made through centralised environments.
Vinay Gupta, one of the early contributors for the Ethereum project, wrote a spot-on, short description of the conference:
The most interesting thing about Oslo Blockchain Day is actually the small country thing, because everybody turns up: the banks, the regulators, the technologists, the startups, the curious, the journalist… So in a single day, you can get everything done.
He made a valid statement. Interestingly enough, I’ve been fortunate enough to meet people that work in a diverse range of sectors. Ranging from ‘scouts’ sent by the Norwegian government in order to stay in sync with the fast advancement of emerging technologies, and up until university students that aimed at sharing their thesis projects with potential funders.
Conference metadata
Before writing about different conference tracks and talks, I would like to share some insights that I ‘scanned’ throughout the conversations that I had with other Blockchain enthusiasts while attending at the workshop before the conference, and the conference itself. Conference metadata. Would, therefore like to mention two technologies that might be worth following: Polkadot and Rust.
Many readers that have a background in programming might be familiar (or be actively) working with the Rust programming language. For the rest, it might be worth taking a closer look at what it brings to the table, and why it fits good with Blockchain development.
Polkadot’s creators describe the technology stack as a revolution, not just in blockchain technology but also towards enabling fairer peer-to-peer digital jurisdictions. Essentially, when we talk about Blockchain, we (among other features)can talk about distribution of tokens over a large network. Polkadot enables us to share arbitrary data among entities, and not limiting ourselves to tokens.
Interestingly enough, the developers that I’ve discussed with said they would prefer having ‘hands-on’ experience with Blockchain by joining start-ups, than being part of already established tech giants. The reason behind their motivation is that they feel more empowered to experiment with Blockchain use cases within small organisations. Berlin seems to be an exotic destination for people interested in technology. Some have gone so far as naming it the ‘capital of Blockchain’ in Europe.
Talks
When it comes to discussing the conference talks, one can confidently say that digital identities in cash programming was a sensible point of interest.
Therefore, it would be worth noticing some use cases for it:
- Speed of reaching people through cash assistance;
- Accountability: avoid re-registration and duplication of services across agencies;
- Data protection: trust vacuum between humanitarian agencies. Can users of digital ID systems understand how will their data be used?
- Data access in order to prove something about oneself. Personal data is currently stored across organisations.
- Collaboration and scale: identity systems only useful if interoperable.
Two notable start-ups that presented their work have notably caught my attention:
What makes Sela Labs’ business model so interesting is due to its potential impact in terms of project management. More exactly, all relevant stakeholders agree to the scope and expectations of a project via a smart contract. In this way, it is assured that all participating agents pre-establish project conditions and milestones beforehand. The system architecture is based on blockchain, which makes the entire process to be completely transparent and trustworthy between all participant agents. Their objective is to make it easier for projects in Africa to attain funding and also reduce the rate of poor project execution. I recommend reading their white paper and get inspired by how blockchain can be applied in various ways.
The second project that I found particularly interesting during Oslo’s Blockchain Day is called Diwala. They are using Blockchain in order to create certification transparency and therefore make it easier for people to validate their skills.
As the last part of my article, I wanted to share a few ideas that were debated throughout discussion panels organised at the end of all talks.
As such, I’ll categorise them into two classes:
Obstacles in the world of Blockchain:
- Difficulties in handing a private key in the hands of refugees (for humanitarian projects);
- People do not understand the technology, or they generally tend to associate it with Bitcoin;
- Lack of genuine key recovery methods is apparently a big issue…who should be the guardian?;
- Difficult to contextualise the technology for all scenarios;
- The space is completely disorganised (it is accelerating but it isn’t stabilised);
- API’s are not well defined;
- Trust in blockchain focused startups has decreased due to initial hype (and as a result a lot of startups failed). Difficult to raise funding;
- People want the space to be more predictable, more simple;
Opinionated discussions (headlines):
- People’s behaviour in terms of blockchain repeat the same pattern as to when the web appeared. They have the tendency and need to consume a different type of media;
- Blockchain used as web services;
- Will take over as to be THE payment system of the web;
- From an infrastructural point of view, it is easier to integrate for potential partners;
- It makes it easier to make money using open source products;
- Assets become liquid;
- Crypto should be shared more and easier with other people so that it becomes easier to use for people without bank accounts;
All in all, it was very interesting to see in how many practical ways one can apply a rather ‘young’ technology such as Blockchain. It is innovators such as the Frontiers that pave the way for practical applications of emerging technologies and their work can only inspire us.
Thank you and feel free to connect. Sharing is caring!
